• Announcements

    • Robin

      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

ProfessorTomoe

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    5,343

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    244

Posts posted by ProfessorTomoe

  1. Posted

    Sorry for the absence - I've been busy putting something together - a new album! My first one in ages. It's called "Going Big," and it's up on Bandcamp now. It consists of pieces that I've released before, but they're all compiled here now. All my "Big" works, like Concert Band, Orchestra, French Horn Choir, that sort of thing. Here's the link:

    https://leejackson1.bandcamp.com/album/going-big

    Please grab a copy and pass the word along! Thanks!

  3. Posted

    Trying again with the image link:

    http://www.lbjackson.com/images/Libertad2023Obverse01.jpg
    http://www.lbjackson.com/images/Libertad2023Reverse01.jpg

    This is a 2023 Mexican .999 fine 1 oz silver coin called a Libertad. I got it on Monday. Libertads have been appreciating in value rapidly on a yearly basis. In a couple of years, this thing, which cost around $38 when new in 2023, will probably bring in around $60.

    EDIT: damned undefined error. I give up.

  7. Posted

    My silver odyssey has paid off big time. Here's my "family portrait," containing my current stash:

    https://media.invisioncic.com/l328053/monthly_2025_05/FamilyPortrait2_0-small.jpg.ee3ba9a3f3312d12aa561e62072a2312.jpg

    For some reason, the board won't let me link images anymore, so please click on that. It's safe, I promise. It's a metric assload of silver - around 21 troy ounces - worth almost $700 at spot prices. I don't know if I'm going to sell any of it or not. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see.

    mlooney reacted to this

  14. Posted

    The pope is dead. However:

    If you are a devout Catholic, you may be offended by what follows. Please forgive me. It is only meant as friendly humor.
     
    Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;
    habemus Papam:
    Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum,
    Dominum Pisces
    Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Swimmeatus
    qui sibi nomen imposuit Dopefish.

  17. Posted

    I messed around with the sticker and wound up peeling it off without residue. Good enough. The back is now visible, but with something that annoys me:

    https://ibb.co/cKg12nmK

    (it won't embed, for some weird reason)

    Anyway, you can see the scratches on the thing. I think they're on the plastic sheath, so they'll go away when I remove that and put the bar into a hard plastic capsule. We'll find out.

  18. Posted

    And they're here! I am now the proud owner of a Johnson Matthey silver 1 oz bar, serial number A495919. Mondo cool. As for the Star Wars coin, it's even prettier than the bar! Beautiful frosted highlights. I've already put it up, or I'd post a pic of it. As for the bar, here it is:

    PXL_20250416_213727418_crop.JPG

    It doesn't look pristine for a couple of reasons. First, it's inside of a sealed plastic slipcase. Second, it's not brand new - Johnson Matthey have been out of the refining business for many moons now, and this is somewhat of an antique bar, so to speak. None of this affects the value, which is in fact enhanced by its collectibility due to its scarcity.

    I've got a better, hard-plastic shell case coming for it. Once it arrives, I'm going to remove the bar from the soft plastic and put it into the new plastic for better protection. Besides, APMEX slapped a barcode sticker on the back of the soft plastic case, so you can't see any of the reverse side of the bar thanks to that. I'll be freeing it up.

  19. Posted

    Quick update: I think the official Apple Thunderbolt 5 cable may have solved the problem I had with my external 4TB drive disconnecting. I haven't had that happen once since I hooked in the new cable. Just as a precaution, though, I bought an el cheapo heat sink to put beneath the drive housing. It's quite large - bigger than the drive itself, although only by a bit - and it does seem to work somewhat in keeping the drive coolish.

    Life with the MacBook Pro MP4 continues to be swell and dandy. No major hiccups, now that I've alleviated the drive disconnect issue.

  21. Posted

    4 hours ago, mlooney said:

    The idea of buying silver via Walmart is a bit weird to me.

    Same here. I was a bit freaked out when I saw it there. But, then I saw the real seller listed (APMEX), and realized that they were doing just what Amazon does (Amazon sells silver as well) with sub-vendors. If I'd been really smart, I'd have held off and bought it along with today's purchase and saved even more money, but no, I got antsy and pulled the trigger too soon.

    I think I'm going to turn this into a once-a-month collector's thing. I'll browse APMEX some more (their inventory is seemingly endless), and see what other vendors are out there and browse them as well. Then, come May, I might pop for something else new for the collection. Or, I might roll over my May allotment to June and buy something bigger in that month. I'd love to get my hands on a 5 oz. piece of silver, just to feel the heft of it. Or, hell, why not one that weighs a troy pound? I might happen to have a spare $458.84 lying around somewhere... -_-

    To very roughly paraphrase a quote from a certain Bond villain:

    Quote

    This is silver, Mr Bond. All my life, I've been in love with its color, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I welcome any enterprise that will increase my stock, which is (not yet) considerable.

    Just call me Professor Silverdigit. :D

  22. Posted

    I decided to make one more purchase this month, just to play a bit of a collector's game with some of the silver "rounds" that are available. The company I've been buying through, APMEX, has its own mint, 9Fine Mint, and they've been running a sale on the 1 oz. "rounds" (think coins, but not legal tender) that they carry. They've got 3 basic designs, and all of them are coincidentally priced exactly the same at the moment. So, I decided to buy one of each and see which one gets the most traction, just for the hell of it.

    Here they are. First, the "beehive" model:

    1-oz-silver-round-9fine-mint-beehive_171

    Next up, the "radial":

    1-oz-silver-round-9fine-mint-radial_1710

    Finally, the "diamond":

    1-oz-silver-round-9fine-mint-diamond-pat

    All have the company logo, but with different embellishments. The back designs differ as well. These I got straight from APMEX instead of going through Walmart, since it was cheaper that way even with the shipping.

  23. Posted

    I did a bit of price comparison shopping, and believe it or not, I managed to snag a Johnson Massey-brand 1 oz. silver bullion bar from APMEX by way of Walmart for less money than if I had bought it from APMEX directly. Saved about $4 on the overall transaction when you figure in the shipping/handling - APMEX wanted $9.95, but Walmart's was free because I'm on the Walmart+ plan.

    Here's what I bought:

    1-oz-silver-bar-johnson-matthey_68308_Ob

    Let me tell you a short, sad tale. Back when I was a kid, I had a little bit of money - just under $100. I took some of it and used it to get into the booming silver market of the day, in the mid-70s. I bought a 10 oz. silver bar (which turned out to be a junk silver pour) for a tad less than $80. I then held onto it until hard times hit, after I'd got married in 1983. I tried to cash it in. Lo and behold, the place from where I bought it no longer existed, and the exchange where I tried to sell it at first didn't want to accept the Certificate of Authenticity that came with it. They eventually caved in, but with me taking a loss of almost $30. The lesson they imparted? "Buy something like Englehart Fabricated next time."

    Well, Englehart no longer fabricates ingots, although their bullion is still around. Their ingots look like crap, though. For a trader, that doesn't matter. For a collector like me, it does. So, I picked a happy medium between reputability and holdability, then bought the best I could afford (Johnson Matthey, above - mine will have a different serial number). I could have bought something in Assay, but I'd never have been able to put my fingers (well, my cotton-gloved fingers) on it. Plus, it'd have been more expensive.

    So, come next week, I'll finally have a reputable, sellable (in case of emergency only), ingot of silver bullion of my very own. I'm stoked. Can't wait.

    The Old Hack reacted to this

  24. Posted

    2 hours ago, ijuin said:

    As for the coins, yeah I get that the bullion ones are super-high purity, but I was responding to Darth Fluffy’s suggestion about buying up old silver US dimes and quarters from pre-1960.

    Ah, I get it now. Thanks for clearing that up.

    I showed the Imperial Star Wars insignia silver coin to Mrs. Prof, and she got a kick out of it. Thought it was a good idea.

  25. Posted

    I went searching for. something for Mrs. Prof, knowing her obsession with cats. APMEX did not have anything suitable, but another company had something suitable for a friend of ours who raised Tonkinese kittens into full-grown cats. The Isle of Man issued a series of bullion and non-bullion coins with cat themes. These included a pair of Tonkinese kittens in a playful pose on a non-bullion release:

    2004_iom_00107_1-1.jpg

    I went ahead and bought this for our friend. He's going to love it. Grand total with shipping + etc. was around $24 dollars.